


Divinity for Those Left Watching

by sockablock



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Bonding through Celestial, Friendship, Gen, they needed more time together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-05-18
Packaged: 2019-05-08 14:21:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14695998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sockablock/pseuds/sockablock
Summary: Caleb and Yasha share a moment in the night's watch.





	Divinity for Those Left Watching

**Author's Note:**

> No spoilers, but inspired by the events of episode 19

That night, before Nott can volunteer to take the second watch with Caleb, Yasha raises her hand.

“I will also keep lookout,” she says, to everybody’s surprise. They are puzzled, Nott slightly disgruntled, Molly amused, but nobody argues.

And when the rest split off into their tents for the night, linens and leathers separating them from the skies, Yasha and Caleb sit back to back beside the warm campfire, crackling in its stone pit. Embers dance in the air. Frumpkin purrs between them, soaking up the gentle warmth.

“Why?” Caleb asks after an hour of near-silence. Crickets chirp softly, an owl soars in the distance.

“I…I was actually hoping you would speak to me,” Yasha says, thumbing the edges of her book.

Caleb has a tome pressed between his fingers as well, but he closes the pages and looks over his shoulder at the massive barbarian woman, hunched in the dirt with her knees against her chest like a child.

“What would you like me to speak of?” He asks.

She is quiet for a moment. And then looks down at the ground. “Tell me about this country.”

He is taken aback, but has never been one to hide knowledge simple as this. “Alright,” he says, “I suppose—”

“Wait. Could you do it in...in the other language? The one…the one we both know.”

At first he does not respond, and she fears she has stepped over some kind of boundary, and begins to apologize. She is worried. Perhaps she has been rude. Perhaps she has offended him in some way. But then, from the mouth of the small, scruffy human beside her, the tongue of the gods slowly tumbles out.

If the stars could speak, if the heavens could whisper, if the moon and sun could sing, they did so now, in the darkness, on this autumn night.

Caleb talks of benign, mundane things, tells her what he knows of the west, where the Empire meets the Menagerie coast. Tells her of the geography of the Zemni Fields, of the principalities of the Marrow Valley. Skims over the mountains to the north and hints briefly at the gorges of the south.

But for the both of them—the one who had poured Celestial into his body like nectar, the other who was born with its syllables etched in her bones—the dry facts of history swell into something else, something grander, something that had graced the infant minds of life when the gods left their first marks across this world. They feel the spray of saltwater along the craggy beaches of Port Damali, the cries of seagulls above the city of Nicodranas. They brush their hands against the bright grasses of Blumenthal, drink the sharp cider of a bustling Harvest’s Close. They hear the rumble of wagons across the sandy Amber Roads, and feel the rain drum against the stone of the Ashkeeper Peaks.

This language, spoken by gods and those touched by gods, does not belong to either of them. Not to Caleb, born a mortal of clay and dirt, nor to Yasha, fallen from the grace that danced through her veins.

But in the quiet, silhouetted by the twirling fire, against the darkness of the night and the forest beyond, dreaming in the melody of Caleb’s words, it almost did.

When his throat finally dries and the faint smoke breaths its last, Yasha presses her hand against Caleb’s arm.

“ _Thank you_ ,” she says, in the tongue neither of them can claim.

“ _You are welcome_ ,” he sighs, and there is a faint smile across his face. “We should do that again sometime, yes?”

“Yes,” she says. “We should.”

Eventually, their watch ends, and they slip back into their tents to rest for the night. The smoke of the fire soon becomes nothing but a wisp of air, and a soft memory in the ashes.

**Author's Note:**

> Come shout with me about this campaign and the last at [@sockablock](https://www.sockablock.tumblr.com) on tumblr!  
> <3


End file.
